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Surien Fourie | Contemporary Artist

@surienfourieart

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Contemporary Mixed-Media Artist
Exploring belonging, memory, identity & repair through layered abstraction.
Painting • Textile
Feature Article 👇🏻

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Every artwork begins with a question. Not a composition. Not a colour palette. Not a finished image. A question.

Over the past few years, these are the questions that have quietly shaped my practice:

• What makes a place feel like home?
• Can someone belong to multiple cultures?
• What remains after loss?
• How do memories shape identity?
• Can repair become part of beauty?

These questions first emerged through my work exploring grief after the loss of my mother.

They have continued through work about healing, reconstruction, and more recently, Third Culture Kid identity and belonging.

The answers are never fixed. Each painting, stitched surface, sculpture, and layered fragment becomes another way of exploring them.

Perhaps that is why I keep returning to thread, torn edges, layers, and acts of repair. Not because they provide answers. But because they allow me to sit with the questions.

The longer I make art, the more I believe my work is not about creating images. It is about investigating what it means to belong, to remember, and to become.

What question has stayed with you over the years?

#SurienFourieFineArt #ArtistProcess #ContemporaryArtist #CanadianArtist #ArtCollectors by @surienfourieart

Some lines don’t separate they strain.

Thread pulled tight across a surface that refuses to settle, holding fragments that shift, rupture, and resist staying in place.

Not fixed. Not resolved. Just… held. Because sometimes belonging isn’t something you find— it’s something you keep together,
with care,
with tension,
over and over again. by @surienfourieart

For a long time, I thought A Path Without a Mother and my current Third Culture Kid work were exploring completely different experiences.

One was about grief. The other is about belonging. But the deeper I look, the more I realize they are asking the same question.

What happens after rupture?

When a mother dies, the relationship doesn’t disappear. The world changes. Identity changes. Home changes. You begin the difficult work of reconstructing yourself around an absence.

When you grow up between cultures, countries, languages, or ways of belonging, a different kind of rupture can emerge. You learn to navigate multiple homes, multiple identities, and multiple versions of yourself. Again, there is a process of reconstruction.

Both bodies of work explore what remains after life changes us. Both ask how memory shapes who we become.

Both investigate belonging, not as a destination, but as something continually made and remade.

This realization has transformed how I understand my own practice.

I no longer see these collections as separate stories. I see them as chapters in a larger inquiry into loss, identity, memory, and belonging.

The materials have known this all along. The stitching. The layers. The fragments. The evidence of repair.

They have been telling the same story, even when I didn’t yet have the words for it.

#SurienFourieFineArt #Belonging #ThirdCultureKid #CanadianArtist #ArtCollectors by @surienfourieart

What does it actually mean to let go after losing someone you love?

For me, it wasn’t about letting go of my mother.

It was about slowly letting go of some of the things I had been carrying since her death.

The anger. The regrets. The guilt. The unanswered questions. The belief that moving forward somehow meant leaving her behind.

As I created A Path Without a Mother, the paintings began to change alongside me.

The earlier works hold much of the rawness of grief—chaos, anger, isolation and loss of identity.

Later, something begins to shift.

There is acceptance. Forgiveness. Peace. And eventually, a willingness to heal.

That progression became one of the most important parts of this collection.

Because healing doesn’t erase what happened.

And moving forward doesn’t require us to stop loving, remembering or missing someone.

Perhaps we don’t let go of the people we’ve lost at all.

We let go of some of the weight we’ve been carrying so there is room for their memory to become something more than pain.

Soul Baring: A Path Without a Mother
@210gallerymb • Winnipeg
November 6 – December 19, 2026 by @surienfourieart

At some point, grief stopped feeling like something I was fighting every moment.

It became something I was learning to understand.

Coping with Grief reflects that shift.

The poem describes grief as a wave, something that comes and goes, sometimes quietly and sometimes with enough force to overwhelm you.

But there is also hope within this piece.

Because coping wasn’t about making the grief disappear.

It was about learning its rhythms. Recognizing when it returned. Allowing myself to feel it without believing I would always remain in that moment.

Over time, grief changed the way I saw the world.

It taught me how fragile life can be, but also how meaningful our relationships, memories and ordinary moments truly are.

The painting and poem exist together as a reminder that learning to live with grief doesn’t diminish the person we lost.

Sometimes it simply means we’re beginning to find our way forward.

Coping with Grief
From Soul Baring: A Path Without a Mother
@210gallerymb • Winnipeg
November 6 – December 19, 2026 by @surienfourieart

What if you could turn a memory into something you can see, feel and create? 🎨

Some memories stay with us in ways that words can’t always express.

They live in colours, textures, feelings and fragments of moments that have shaped who we are.

I’m excited to be hosting What Remains: Exploring Memory Through Abstract Painting at 210 Gallery in Winnipeg, alongside my solo exhibition, Soul Baring: A Path Without a Mother.

During this hands-on workshop, we’ll explore how memories and personal experiences can become the starting point for meaningful abstract artwork.

Through colour, texture, layering and intuitive mark-making, I’ll guide you through creating a piece that reflects something meaningful to you.

You don’t need to be an experienced artist. Just bring your curiosity, an open mind and a willingness to explore.

This workshop isn’t about creating a perfect painting. It’s about discovering what remains with us, what changes over time and how art can give those experiences a visual voice.

Workshop Details

📅 Saturday, November 7, 2026
🕐 1:00–4:00 PM
📍 210 Gallery | 210 Princess Street, Winnipeg
🎟️ $15 per person
🔗 Register at 210gallery.ca

I’d love to spend an afternoon creating, reflecting and exploring the stories we carry with you.

What memory would you turn into a painting?

#SurienFourieFineArt #210Gallery #WinnipegArt #AbstractPainting #ArtWorkshop by @surienfourieart

Some stories are too deeply felt to be told with words alone.

This Friday, I invite you to experience a collection that has been years in the making.

Soul Baring: A Path Without a Mother is one of the most personal bodies of work I’ve created.

Born from my experience of losing my mother, this collection explores the complicated, often contradictory emotions of grief—from anger, regret and isolation to acceptance, forgiveness and healing.

Each painting holds a moment. A memory. An emotion that was sometimes too difficult to put into words.

Through layers of colour, texture and expressive marks, I found a way to give those experiences a visual voice. Accompanying poems offer another layer of the story, inviting you to experience the work beyond what you see on the canvas.

Although these paintings began with my story, my hope is that they create space for yours.

Because grief is deeply personal, yet there is something universal about love, loss and the memories we carry.

I’d love for you to join me this Friday for the opening reception.

Come experience the collection in person, hear the stories behind the paintings and spend an evening surrounded by art and conversation.

Exhibition Details

📍 210 Gallery | 210 Princess Street, Winnipeg
📅 Opening Reception: Friday, November 6, 2026
🕕 6:00–9:00 PM
🎤 Artist Talk: 7:00 PM
🖼️ Exhibition runs November 6 – December 19, 2026

Whether you’ve followed the creation of this collection or are discovering my work for the first time, I’d love to share this experience with you.

And perhaps, somewhere among these paintings, you’ll find a piece of your own story reflected back at you.

I hope to see you Friday! ❤️

#SurienFourieFineArt #SoulBaring #APathWithoutAMother #210Gallery #firstfridayswinnipeg @210gallerymb by @surienfourieart

Eventually, there were moments when grief became quiet.

Overwhelming Calmness. Respite from the Sadness. Coping with Grief.

These three paintings mark a subtle shift within A Path Without a Mother.

The loss is still present. The sadness hasn’t disappeared. But somewhere among the difficult days, there are moments when you realize you can breathe again.

A moment of calm.

An afternoon when sadness isn’t occupying every thought.

The realization that, somehow, you are learning how to live alongside what happened.

I wanted these paintings to hold that quieter part of grief.

Not happiness replacing sadness.

Not an ending.

Just the first glimpse of space opening around it.

As this collection moves toward its final paintings, that space becomes increasingly important. The work begins to move away from simply surviving loss and toward learning how to carry it.

Soul Baring: A Path Without a Mother
@210gallerymb • Winnipeg
November 6 – December 19, 2026 by @surienfourieart

Something begins to shift here.

Not Prepared. Connected Through Loss. At Peace.

These works sit at an important point within A Path Without a Mother.

The loss hasn’t disappeared. But the relationship to it is beginning to change. There is an acknowledgement that we can never truly prepare ourselves for losing someone we love.

There is the unexpected connection that can grow between people who recognize grief in one another.

And then there is At Peace. Not an ending. Not forgetting. Simply a quieter place to stand.

As the collection moves forward from here, the paintings begin carrying more space, reflection and healing.

When all of these works are together at 210 Gallery, I’m especially interested in seeing whether visitors feel that transition, not only through the titles, but through the paintings themselves.

Soul Baring: A Path Without a Mother @210gallerymb • Winnipeg November 6, – December 19, 2026 by @surienfourieart

Almost everyone will experience grief. But no two people will experience it in exactly the same way.

That idea sits at the heart of A Path Without a Mother.

We often talk about grief as though we move through a series of stages and eventually emerge on the other side. My experience was nothing like that.

I could feel acceptance one day and anger the next. I could laugh at a memory and cry over another. Years later, something seemingly insignificant could still bring everything rushing back.

So this collection doesn’t present healing as a straight line. It circles. Repeats. Softens. Returns. And slowly, the paintings begin to change.

Not because the person is forgotten. Because carrying the loss begins to feel different.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons grief appears so often in art. The specifics of our losses belong to us, but the emotions can create a place where complete strangers recognize one another.

Soul Baring: A Path Without a Mother @210gallerymb • Winnipeg November 6, – December 19, 2026 by @surienfourieart

Regrets. No Regrets. Isolation of Grief.

Even their titles contradict one another. And that’s intentional. Grief rarely gives us one clean version of the past.

We can wish something had happened differently while knowing we did everything we could. We can feel surrounded by people who love us and still experience grief as something deeply solitary.

These paintings hold those contradictions rather than trying to resolve them.

I think that is part of what draws us toward certain pieces of art. We don’t always want an artwork to give us an answer. Sometimes we want it to understand the question.

And when a painting speaks to an experience we recognize, it can become much more than something we chose because it worked beautifully in a room. It becomes something we keep because it means something.

Soul Baring: A Path Without a Mother @210gallerymb • Winnipeg November 6, – December 19, 2026 by @surienfourieart

What does memory look like when we put it into colour, shape, and texture?

Join artist Surien Fourie (@surienfourieart) for What Remains: Exploring Memory Through Abstract Painting, a hands-on workshop that invites participants to reflect on memory and personal experiences through art.

Through abstract painting, explore what we hold on to, what changes over time, and how these experiences can take shape on canvas.

Saturday, November 7, 2026
1 PM to 4 PM
210 Gallery, 210 Princess Street, Winnipeg
$15 per person

Register through the link in our bio. by @surienfourieart